Neon Saturday Night (Low Country Lovers Book 2)

by Julia McBryant

  Calhoun opens his eyes and blinks sleepily. His eyes immediately narrow. “I told you not to come down!” His voice comes out thick, garbled with fluid.

  “I didn’t — I should have come down earlier,” Audie says. He should have known. Audie sat home jacking off and Calhoun was running a high fever. Fuck fuck fuck. Why didn’t he do something about it? “I’m so sorry.”

  “I told you not to come.” Calhoun sits up a little bit.

  “You needed me to come.”

  “I. Don’t. Need. You,” Calhoun says fiercely.

  Audie almost bursts into tears but keeps his voice level. “You do,” he says. “C’mon. You’re going to take a cool bath to get your temperature down, then I’m going to run to the pharmacy for you. Have you had any Advil or —” He has to ask, but he knows Calhoun hasn’t taken any.

  “No. And I told you I don’t need you. I’m fine.”

  “I’ll be right back, okay?” Audie kisses Calhoun on the forehead and shudders inwardly at how hot he feels. A rummage through his medicine cabinet finds Advil and some cold meds at least. Audie brings them in along with some ice water. “Here, baby. Drink all this, okay? I think you’re dehydrated.”

  “I’m not dehydrated. I’m fine.”

  Audie takes in the scene. “Honey,” he says. “I think you have the flu. Like actual influenza. You didn’t get the shot again, did you?”

  “You wouldn’t either if you passed out at needles!” Calhoun snaps. He takes the glass of water from Audie and glares while he drinks it and tosses back the medication. “My throat hurts,” he complains.

  “Okay, now this part is gonna suck,” Audie says. “But you need to get in a cool bath to get your temperature down.” He hated this when he was small. “I’ll run it for you and hold your hand and talk to you, and you don’t have to stay in there long, but you have to stay in there, okay?” Calhoun’s so hot it scares him, and he can’t tell how hot without a thermometer.

  He runs the water and makes it cool, not cold. Oh, but this will suck. “C’mon, love,” he says, taking Calhoun’s hands to help him up. Audie cracks a grin. “Come take your clothes off for me.”

  “Stop it. I don’t need you to do any of this for me. You never should have come down.” Calhoun turns his back.

  “Then who was going to take care of you?” Audie asks.

  “I don’t need anyone to take care of me.”

  “Calhoun, you’re burning up and you wouldn’t even take Advil by yourself. C’mon.”

  Audie somehow wrangles Calhoun into the bathroom, where he pulls off his boyfriend’s T-shirt and pajama pants. “In the tub,” he says. “It’ll suck but it’ll help.”

  Calhoun stick a toe in. “It’s cold!” he wails.

  Audie hates this. He hates seeing Calhoun sick, and he hates the cancer-for-cure of a cold bath. But Audie also hates the hollow place Calhoun makes by insisting, over and over, that he doesn’t need him. Audie’s always the fucked-up one, the upset one, the one that comes with baggage. He can’t give much. But he can give this. It shocks him, how desperate he is to play nurse to a Calhoun sitting in a half-filled tub and bitching loudly about the cold. Audie’s need to give this simple thing astounds him. He hates himself for not coming earlier.

  Hearing it’s not wanted, not necessary, go away — it guts him. It feels as if he’s held out something of himself to Calhoun, and Calhoun has batted it out of his hands. He doesn’t expect Calhoun to thank him for pouring cool water over his back while he shakes with cold. He just wants Calhoun to need him.

  For once, Audie wants to be needed, instead needing.

  It’s a miserable fifteen minutes of murderous glances and shivering, Calhoun curled knees to chest and complaining, especially when Audie washes his hair. Finally Audie finds a fluffy towel and helps him out. He dries Calhoun carefully. It seems strange to touch Calhoun with no intentions, to run his hands over him without that sharp spike of desire. Audie dresses his boyfriend in a clean T-shirt and pajama pants, then wraps him in a blanket and sits him on the couch while he changes his sheets. He suspects Calhoun been lying in bed sick for three days, and new sheets will feel better.

  “C’mon,” he coaxes. “Back to bed. And you need to eat. If you could eat anything in the whole world, what would it be?”

  “'M not hungry.”

  “Pretend your boyfriend is an asshole and is going to make you eat. You think about it while I run to the pharmacy, okay?”

  When he comes home, Calhoun has fallen asleep again. Audie hates to wake him.

  “Hey, love,” he says. “I brought you all the meds. Sit up and take them for me, they’ll make you feel better.”

  “I don’t like pills.” Calhoun would rather suffer a migraine than pop a damn Tylenol.

  “Calhoun, you are going to take medicine so you don’t get sicker.” Audie lays out a substantial array of decongestants, cough suppressants, and everything else the pharmacist recommended. “Here’s more water. Take them. Or I’m going to be mean boyfriend.”

  Calhoun glares again and downs all the pills. “You shouldn’t have come,” he says again.

  “Pretend I just wanted to see you,” Audie says.

  “I didn’t want you to see me like this.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re not supposed to.” Calhoun sighs. “I’m so tired.”

  “Why am I not supposed to?”

  “I don’t need you.”

  “Stop saying that,” Audie finally tells him.

  “Why?” Calhoun asks. He looks angry.

  “How do you think it makes me feel, Calhoun?”

  “I don’t need you. I’m not supposed to need you.”

  “Well, I’m not supposed to need you either, but here we fucking are.” Audie glares at him.

  “I didn’t want to bother you,” Calhoun says in a quieter voice.

  “You never bother me. I want to help you if you need help. Why wouldn’t you let me?”

  Calhoun looks guilty.

  Really, really guilty.

  Audie deflates. He knows why. Audie isn’t supposed to help. Audie’s supposed to need help, and Calhoun does the helping. Audie’s fucked up, Calhoun is not. Audie needs Calhoun. Calhoun does not need Audie. He turns away. “Did you decide on what to eat?” he asks. “If you can’t decide I’m ordering Lunette and getting it delivered.” Lunette makes the best sandwiches in Charleston and they both know it.

  “Not hungry.”

  “Okay, I’ll call us some Lunette. And you’re going to eat it.”

  He goes into the living room, sits on Calhoun’s battered couch under a hippie tapestry, and thinks about flipping on the TV but doesn’t bother. Audie didn’t understand until now how much he wanted someone to need him, and how much it hurts that no one ever has — Easter might have needed him, but he fucked that up. Thank you means something, but not enough when someone else can do it. He feels replaceable: another kind of unwanted.

  Audie is fucked up and Calhoun saves him.

  That’s a shit narrative. Uncomplicated and boring on the outside, miserable and repetitive when you’re stuck inside it.

  When the sandwiches arrived, he gets Calhoun. “Up into the living room,” he says. “No crumbs on clean sheets. I’ll wrap you up so you’re nice and warm.”

  Calhoun sets down his book. “Were you watching TV?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “Then why did you go out there?” He looks confused.

  “I thought maybe you wanted to sleep,” Audie lies.

  Calhoun sort of gives him a look but doesn’t say anything.

  His boyfriend spends most of the next three days sleeping. Audie feeds him. He brings him water and Gatorade, alternating. The medicine keeps his fever down and his chest and head cleared out. By the third day, he seems much better. Audie’s spent most of his time either fetching and carrying, reading, or sleeping on the couch.

  “You should go back and get to class. I’m fine. I don’t need you here,” C
alhoun says.

  That phrase again. Audie shrugs. “No one cares if I skip.”

  “You know you didn’t have to come down,” Calhoun says. He’s up and about now, sitting in the living room watching a movie, but still wrapped in a blanket. He and Audie aren’t cuddling. They haven’t since Audie arrived. Calhoun probably thinks the no-touching policy has to do with him being sick, and Audie hasn’t mentioned it.

  “I did need to come down though.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I love you, so I did. Just shut up and let me have this,” Audie says wearily. “Will you stop it? I’m tired of it. I don’t mind taking care of you. I really don’t. I’m angry at myself for not coming sooner.” He puts his feet up on Calhoun’s coffee table. Savage, but then so is Calhoun’s battle-scarred coffee table.

  “You didn’t have to come at all. I mean, I’m grateful you did, Audie. But you didn’t have to and I didn’t need you to. I don’t need you to do things for me.”

  “Calhoun, just stop it.”

  “Stop what?”

  Calhoun has no idea what he’s talking about. Fuck. Time to spell it out.

  “Look. I’m always the fucked up one. You’re always saving me. It’s always, ‘let’s make Audie better.’ It gets old. So maybe give me this and let me help you for once, okay? I know I suck and I can’t manage much. Just let me have this. You don’t have to say thank you. But you can stop saying you didn’t need help and I shouldn’t have come.”

  Calhoun blinks at him from under the blanket. “You’re not fucked up.”

  “You just missed the entire point.”

  “No I didn’t.”

  Audie sighs. He doesn’t want to make this about him. Calhoun’s sick. He doesn’t need some massive Audie drama. “Nevermind.”

  Audie emails his professors: sick boyfriend, blah blah, sorry about class, here’s his paper, blah blah. He knows he’ll get grace because he never emails about absences.

  He sleeps on the couch again.

  Calhoun seems mostly mobile by Wednesday. “You can go home now,” he says over breakfast. “I know you have class.”

  “I already took off the rest of the week.”

  “Why the hell did you do that?”

  “You’re sick.”

  “But —”

  “Calhoun.” Audie finally looks at him square over their coffee. “If I were as sick as you were, what would you have done? Tell me, and don’t you fucking lie.”

  He’s quiet for a minute. “I’d have come up and taken care of you.” He looks up at Audie with those big eyes, finally not red-rimmed.

  “So why isn’t it okay that I came down to take care of you?”

  “Because I’m not supposed to need you!” Calhoun nearly yells. It shocks Audie in its vehemence. “You have enough to cope with! You don’t need me to fucking add to it, Audie!”

  Calhoun never says “fuck.”

  “What,” Audie asks icily, “do I have that’s more important than you?” He gets up and pours Calhoun more coffee, then adds cream and sugar the way he likes it. Audie sets the coffee on the table in front of Calhoun.

  “You need to take care of yourself,” Calhoun says. “Not me.”

  “Can’t I take care of you sometimes?”

  “I don’t need taken care of. I especially don’t need you to do it. If I’d have gotten really sick I’d have called my dad.”

  Audie snorts. “You clearly did need taken care of.”

  “And that’s not your job.”

  “Then what the fuck is my job?”

  It hangs between them, sucking the air from the room. If Audie can’t take care of Calhoun sometimes, what is he good for? He can reel from fun boyfriend to traumatized boyfriend in equal turns, and when he’s traumatized boyfriend, Calhoun can swoop in and lead him out of his own darkness: I can’t say I love you. I’m terrified you’ll hurt me. My parents hurt me and you will hurt me. Audie’s problems are not the small kind, not easily solved, not the type you pop some pills for. They run deep, fissures that crack him to pieces some days. Calhoun always holds him through them. And when Audie tries to give this simple thing, this small thing, Calhoun swats it away. I don’t need you. That’s not your job. Go home.

  “Your job is to finally be loved, Audie,” Calhoun says, and he says it with big eyes, serious and earnest eyes.

  “That isn’t enough.”

  His brows knit, that little line that comes when Calhoun feels confused or upset. Audie always wants to kiss it away. “What d’you mean?”

  “I’m not the fucking Velveteen Rabbit or Corduroy the Bear. I’m not your broken toy to save all the damn time.”

  Calhoun narrows his eyes. “Is that what you think I think of you?”

  “Right now? That and I’m a damn fun top. You like to save me and you like to fuck me. What happens when I don’t need saving and you’re tired of fucking me? Think about that a while.” Audie walks out of the kitchen. Instead of staying at Calhoun’s house, he gets in the Porsche, calls his mother, says he’s in Charleston for the day and asks if he can take her to lunch.

  Excruciating, of course. But it makes her superficially happy, as happy as she can be: thrilled to show off her good-looking son with nice manners in a good restaurant where her friends can see her. He’s borrowed clothes from Calhoun so he looks presentable. Yes ma’am and no ma’am and down to see the tailor, ma’am. Not seeing anyone but too busy with school. Miss you so much. Probably applying to Savannah School for the Arts next year, the best MFA program in the country, and it looks promising.

  “Your father won’t be happy to have a poet in the house,” she warns. “You know what he thinks about poets, darling.”

  “My father isn’t happy with most of my decisions, so I don’t think much will change, Mama,” Audie says, and that’s as close as they come to it.

  He comes back to Calhoun’s and unlocks the door without knocking. Calhoun sits on the couch with Saturday Night Live reruns. “I thought you left,” he says.

  “I took my mother out to lunch.”

  “Brave of you.”

  “Yeah. Well. I needed something to do.”

  Audie sits on the couch next to Calhoun. They don’t touch. “How do you feel?” he asks.

  “Mostly better.”

  “That’s good. I guess I can head out today after all. Since you don’t need me.”

  “I guess you can. If you want.”

  That if you want dangles between them, an offering. Audie scrutinizes it and wonders if it’s enough. “Do you want me to?” he asks carefully.

  “I was supposed to come up this weekend anyway,” Calhoun says.

  “Is that enough?”

  “I don’t know.” He stares at the wall. “You think I just want to have sex and save you. I don’t. I want to be around you. I want to sleep next to you and cuddle you and love you. I wish I didn’t have to hold you through all that shit. It sucks for you and I hate to see it. I’ve always wished I didn’t have to. The only time you seemed really whole? Like really, really truly okay? That first night, and you were faking it.” He pauses. “And when you were taking care of me. I didn’t think you could.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Audie snarks.

  “No, Audie,” Calhoun says. “It’s not a selfishness thing. I thought you would fall apart seeing me like that. And you didn’t.”

  It hurts Audie, that Calhoun thinks so little of him. He doesn’t say it.

  But Calhoun turns to Audie. “But who gets that, you know? Who gets someone who would drop everything and drive a hundred miles to put him complaining and bitching in a cold bath, pour water on him, change his sheets, and spend days taking care of him while he whined and never once complain? Who would cancel class for a week just to hang out and order me sandwiches? God, you can’t cook, but you went out and bought me chicken soup. Who does that? No one does that, Audie.”

  Audie looks down. “Someone who loves you does that,” he says. He’s waited his w
hole life to love someone this way: a whole lifetime boiled down to forcing his boyfriend complaining into a cold bath. “I waited forever to bring you Gatorade,” he says, and it sounds so stupid. “We make love and that’s one thing but this is another and I just need you to let me tell you I love you. Without buying something or pushing you against a wall. You can’t make a life out of that, Calhoun.”

  Audie wants to slam his hands over his mouth. You don’t say that kind of thing when you just turned twenty-one.

  “Is that what you want?” Calhoun asks gently. It’s the voice he uses that Audie can never resist, and Calhoun knows he can never resist it. Goddamn him.

  “Yes,” Audie says, and his voice comes out quiet and frightened. “I wouldn’t be with you for this long if I didn’t.”

  “Me too,” Calhoun says. He finally crosses the gap between them, the yawning gap Audie’s kept for days. He wraps Audie up. “That’s what I want, too. Don’t be afraid of it. You’re doing that thing. Don’t do that thing. You just saw you don’t have to anymore.”

  Maybe in a strange way he did. Maybe he proved he had something to give, and in proving that, he can finally realize an equal footing between them: Calhoun needs him. He as much as said so. He doesn’t need Audie to be perfect. He needs Audie to love him.

  “Come to bed,” Calhoun says.

  “No,” Audie says. “You’re still too sick. But I’ll cuddle.”

  They lay on the clean sheets and Calhoun feels solid, real in his arms. Audie holds his boyfriend’s stomach, runs an arm under his neck and holds his chest. Poor thing, he still smells sick. When he begins whimpering and moving on Audie, Audie shushes him. “None of that,” he says, “or I’ll sleep on the couch. Maybe tomorrow or the next day and then only gentle and slow and nothing inside you. You need to rest. We have so long to do that.” So many days stretch out ahead of them. But right now, Calhoun needs held, cuddled. He needs to sleep, to let his body heal. Audie sweeps the hair off Calhoun’s forehead. He’ll give him a shower tonight. And maybe — maybe then. But only for him, not for Audie. Audie closes his eyes. This is what it means to love someone. This is what he waited for. Holding his sick boyfriend, the one he can’t have sex with, the one who drifts to fever dreams in his arms, Audie feels something quiet, something gentle wash over him. It takes him a moment to recognize it. He has to feel the edges, to touch it and hold it close. They call it peace.